Chapter Text
In the dark, Alan looks pale and soft - delicate, the way all humans seem to Scratch. They’re fragile little creatures, glass spun and set out upon the world as if they won’t shatter at the slightest breeze. How any of them survive is frankly miraculous. Moonlight inches through the curtains, harsh lines cutting across the cabin wall and dripping silver across the man’s upturned face. There’s a furrow between his heavy brows, a slight frown on his face as Alan turns about under the covers and his bare feet kick out. He’s having a nightmare, Alan does almost every night and it’s Scratch’s fault.
One night Alan had awoken, confused and lost as to where he was - but Scratch does not know what it means to comfort and so the attempt at distracting him with teasing came out too cutting. On the knife's edge of cruelty. In that moment it had seen the devastated resignation on the man’s face and realized Alan believed he was still beneath the lake; that their bond had been no more than an illusion, brutality to harm him. Scratch fumbled to prove otherwise.
‘No, see?’ Scratch had put Alan’s hand to its cheek, the short stubble of a freshly shaven beard. It was only a week ago that Alan meticulously took a razor to Scratch’s face in the lodge motel, a week since this man let himself be kissed. Kissed back. ‘We are here.’
For a moment the pain in his eyes lingered, but the sharp prickle of Scratch’s perpetual 5 o’clock shadow against his palm was familiar enough to ease Alan’s racing heart. He calmed in slow increments, eyes downcast, and Scratch understood this was not a place it could mock him and remain loved for long.
‘I'm sorry.’ It said earnestly. ‘Didn’t mean it.’
Alan remained quiet for so long the silence grew agonizing, then finally turned his eyes on Scratch. ‘Don’t say things you don’t mean, otherwise people won’t know when it’s the truth.’
And so Scratch endeavors to be truthful, at least where Alan Wake is concerned, but when the man falls into a nightmare Scratch is at a loss as to how it might go about remedying this. How does the one who caused the harm make it better? The ink blot of darkness coalesces, coming together into something solid - tangible, and when Scratch feels the confines of a human shape encasing him he performs a full body shudder. The effect looks rather like a dog shaking water off its fur, and the little bits of darkness that like to cling like dryer lint to his body go scattering into the either.
Scratch recalls half-hazy memories, fished from a deep well in Alan’s mind, of his time with Alice. Though it is loath to pay too close attention to such things, jealousy flaring hot and unkind, these memories are undeniably laced with comfort.
Moving carefully he comes to lay on the bed at Alan’s side, pulling him in with an arm around his hip until the man’s back is pressed against Scratch’s chest. He tries to mimic what was uncovered in Alan’s memories; Alice comforting him in the night, holding him to her breast when all Alan could do was tremble and sob, limbs tangled like vines of ivy crawling up a garden trellis. Scratch is not made for these things, tenderness is not a natural part of his existence and it feels very much like he’s trying to get a passing grade on a test he doesn’t know the rules of. What he can do is follow the instinct guiding him to put a hand flat against Alan’s chest - over the thunderous beat of his heart that flaps frightened wings, a trapped bird trying to claw itself free of its cage.
“Be still.” Scratch presses the man to him with the hand upon Alan’s chest, and must fight the urge to open his own body up for consumption - to let Alan Wake fall within him.
At the sound of his voice Alan’s half-asleep panicking slows to stillness, the harsh lines of his face softening and Scratch slips his hand beneath the man’s shirt to put his chilled palm to Alan’s skin instead. It takes nearly half an hour for Alan’s body to relax, his voice raw with sleep as he speaks.
“Scratch?” Alan sounds so scared, lost and childish in his murmuring.
“Bad dreams.” He reassures, fingers trailing beneath Alan’s tee-shirt, pressing into the dip of his collarbone. “We are here.”
Alan Wake had been a brash and arrogant man, quick to snap his milk teeth as soon as Scratch came too close - he’s much quieter now. Withdrawn, anxious. Things he was before that have merely been amplified, dragged from the depths of his lungs until Alan was practically choking on it and now here in the dark he shivers beneath Scratch’s touch. Yet, when it begins to pull away Alan claws for its hand and brings it back, keeping Scratch there with the arm around his waist. Scratch doesn’t understand, and no matter how much he tries cannot make sense of it.
If Alan is frightened of him, why does he seek him out?
“If you loved me, why did you frighten me?” Alan shoots back, just as much in its head as it is in his own, but Scratch has no answer that would satisfy.
He was simply doing what is in his nature, has never had reason to consider another’s feelings as he does now, but Alan’s matter. Alan matters.
“I love you.” He says both because it is true and because there is nothing else he has to offer.
Alan hides his face in the soft crook of his arm, shying away from the creature rubbing little circles against his hip. There are times Scratch seems almost human, full of all these little idiosyncrasies too specific to be meaningless mimicry - other times it is monstrous and alien and Alan cannot decide which would be better now. That isn’t fair, he shouldn’t expect another being to bend to his whims like a child playing with his toys. Like nothing more than characters on a page. He feels Scratch tense at his back, a swirling aura of conflicted emotions radiating off the other in turns.
“I’m okay.” Alan croaks into his arm. He’s so goddamn sick of feeling on the verge of tears at every little thing, as if he may crumble into motes of dust at a moment's notice. He feels so intangible.
Some days, he wonders if he should’ve stayed below. Alan will stand on the shore of Cauldron Lake, bare feet in the rocky sand with his trousers rolled up around his ankles as the waves drag him closer. Maybe he will walk right into the lake and never stop, simply end up floating on the lake-bed like Barbara Jagger. If he went down, would he ever come back up? Is the Dark Place waiting for him in the ocean, or has it fractured away into nothingness without Scratch there to hold it all together? Which came first; hell or the devil? Something in the back of his brain tells him that deep dark ocean still holds so much left unexplored, a world upon other worlds. One day, when the only one left of this story that remains is Alan Wake himself, he may return to it again.
Scratch presses closer, one hand sliding up his throat past his jaw and pushes back the dark hair that falls around Alan’s face. The touch is gentle in ways the monster has never been with another, the honeyed affection of a wild animal as he soothes Alan with quiet words until the man lets out a broken sob and turns in their embrace - facing Scratch. The old cabin that sits on Cauldron Lake creaks and groans with age, the rush of wind and water sloshing at the rocky shore - but his tears are quiet. In the dark his eyes are frightfully blue, hazy the way of dawn's early light and Scratch fails to replicate them even now. It cannot copy this part of him, no matter how hard it tries.
“Did you always love me?” Alan's fingers grip the front of it’s shirt, that black flannel and gray tee they were given after being found on the shore, his voice desperate. A need to know. When did it start, how did it start, why?
“I wanted you from the moment I felt you here.” Scratch says honestly. “I wanted to have you, your mind is so vast. I coveted you abstractly, the loving came later.”
Somehow this isn’t the blow Alan expected, but it is a great deal more than he thinks he can handle.
“I hated you, then I wanted you to stay inside me forever, and then I loved you.” Maybe loving this feral thing made it different, made them both something new - an unknown variable. The day he and Alice married his mother told him; love will make you into a man you didn’t know you could be, and she wasn’t wrong. He’s just not certain what kind of man Scratch has made him, what sort of man he’s made Scratch. Who they have the potential to become.
“I can stay.” Scratch offers, tentative. “In your dreams.” Perhaps if he is there in Alan’s mind, a place so familiar to him Scratch feels it's practically home, he can cut the nightmares off at the pass.
“Okay.” He says like he isn’t certain it’s a good idea, but that he’s hoping it will be.
Scratch will be good, just as he promised, and when Alan feels the tendrils of this entity seeping into his mind - flooding through every corner and crevice, the pain he’s anticipating is absent. Whether Scratch could always be gentle he isn’t certain, but it is now and the sensation of being irrevocably together no longer fills him with instinctual dread. It fills the void inside him, heavy like the pressure of an endless ocean surrounding him on all sides, but not at all unwelcome. When he falls back into sleeping, no longer alone in his own head, the nightmares are chased away and he will wake to sunshine.
It isn’t so much that Alice expected to end up back in Bright Falls, but it isn’t a surprise. Not even to Estevez, who has sent her with a promise to gently remind Alan he really ought to call the Director back. Even if just to tell her to leave him alone, though Estevez seems under the impression Alice is capable of changing his mind and will undoubtedly be disappointed. The last she spoke to him over the phone he’d enthusiastically complained about receiving a dozen or so voice-mails from one Jesse Faden - who seemed to be growing in frustration the longer he ignored her calls.
“If you call her back you won’t have this problem.” Alice laughed into the speaker, stuck in New York traffic and wishing she just took a damn flight instead. The cost to ship all these boxes was one she steadfastly refused to endure, no matter what Alan said about just taking the money from his account.
“Tell Faden to eat shit.” Scratch hissed from close enough to the receiver its voice was picked up, the creaking floorboards indicating it was pacing particularly aggressively.
It’s…uncanny, strange, to hear them both speak together in a normal conversation. Eerie. This is just one more thing Alice isn’t sure how to feel about; Scratch. Some of them, like Estevez, consider it an entirely individual being - unrelated to Alan in any way. Maybe that was true once. Maybe it came into existence already knowing Alan would be there one day and was simply waiting under the lake for his eventual arrival. Regardless, she knows Alan better than anyone else does and most certainly better than any investigator or officer or Director of spooky things.
She knows, in ways no one else ever could, how Alan has been teetering on the edge all his life; one foot over open air as he stares down the cliff face - she’d tried to balance him back towards solid ground, but never really could. In Scratch lives all of their angry shouting matches, the nights spent sleeping in separate rooms, days at a time when Alan did not eat or shower or sleep and wouldn’t speak a word. He would write and he would breathe and he would do nothing else. In Scratch she sees those unfavorable rumors spread by jilted fans who never got their autograph, the times Alan flicked off paparazzi who got too close or tried putting a hand on him to get a reaction. All the moments Alan was capable of cruelty, wrapped up into one entity.
But so too is Scratch filled with that childlike wonder Alan reserved for rare moments when he thought no one could see. He really is exceptional, his mind so vast, and there lay Scratch at the center. Alice knows that she cannot accept Alan without accepting the other, for they are one in ways that are difficult to understand. Separate beings made into a symbiotic unit, a force of nature and she’s no longer afraid of what their storm may bring. That doesn’t make it easy, but she’s getting better at it.
“Didn’t expect to see you back so soon.” Alex Casey says over the rim of his coffee mug, watching her sidelong with an appraising sort of stare. He doesn’t know what to make of her, but seems to respect her in that gruff way of his.
The office in the motel is covered with files and paperwork, the far wall strung with red thread connecting photographs and notes like something out of a daytime television police drama. The investigation has been a difficult one for them to put together, especially with the inclusion of the FBC, and she doesn’t envy Saga Anderson’s job in this. Alice sets her duffel bag down on the table, then begins pulling out the papers she’d gotten from the Federal Bureau of Control when she visited it years ago - she trusts Casey and Saga more than the FBC. This was personal for them, too.
“I’m dropping some things off for Alan, stuff I had in storage. Thought I’d do some work for the gallery while I’m here.” A decade ago it had been exceptionally bizarre to pack up boxes with Alan's things, back when she knew he was out there somewhere just waiting to be found, but now they’re a physical symbol of their lives separating. Just as she suspected they would one day. She’s sad in the way it feels to say goodbye on the last day of summer camp, a certain melancholy most certainly - but not how she expected to feel when leaving her husband behind. Ex-husband, she figures, and the thought of that is strange even though he hasn’t been her husband on paper for many years.
The courts called it ‘death in absentia’.
Casey turns to her, an awkward sort of look on his face as he seems to consider how much he wants to say. Or how to ask. Then the tense line of his shoulders eases and he rakes a hand through his messy hair, deciding Alice doesn’t need to be handled with kid gloves. She isn’t just some random civilian, after all.
“I didn't get a chance to say it before, but I’m sorry about how things worked out.” It’s sincere, more so than she expected to get from a man who seems so closed off, but Casey’s voice is empathetic. “It's not the same, but my ex left when she couldn’t handle the stuff this job calls me to do. So, ah…I’m sorry.”
His smile is a little terse, like he doesn’t smile much at all and forgot how to do it properly, but…it's sweet. Eases the seemingly permanent scowl on his face. Casey really is a handsome man, she thinks. Though he has the same sort of wide blue eyes Alan's got, his sharp features makes them look nothing alike - if he smiled for real she can picture him being rather dashing.
“Thank you.” Alice says appreciatively, lining the FBC records and her own notes on the table just to give herself something to do. She cannot tell this man about the reality of their marriage, of the fights and the secret thing that left Alan hiding from himself - but suspects this man already has some idea anyway. “It's…he was gone a long time and I was on my own, so it doesn’t feel that much different I guess. We’re still friends and that’s all I want from him.”
There’s that sharp curiosity in his eyes as Casey follows the nervous movement of her fidgeting with the manila folder, gears turning as he considers for a quiet moment before he downs the rest of his drink in one go. “I’m sick of looking at paperwork, if you want to sample Bright Falls finest food-” He says, dryly sarcastic, while swinging his long coat over his shoulders. “You’re welcome to join me.”
Whether it’s a distraction for himself or her benefit she doesn’t know, but can’t help herself from feeling grateful for it either way. “I’ll take you up on that, agent Casey.”
So she ends up in the Oh Deer Diner with Alex Casey, who wryly regales her with the sordid details of his exceptionally less amicable divorce - occasionally gesturing so strongly the coffee threatens to slosh right out of his mug. Alice finds that yes when he smiles for real he looks much kinder than his usual scowl would imply and talking to someone who gets it, all of it, makes things a lot less scary. Casey has seen what she has seen. Knows what she knows. This is less venting about an ex and more a desperate need to be seen, understood by another person, and it eases some unknown ache in her heart.
That Alan chooses to stay on Diver’s Isle is well beyond her understanding, but so is much of what Alan does. To be fair, the fact it’s risen from the depths is itself another mystery and when asked Alan simply said it was a good place to ‘keep an eye on things’ - but she thinks there’s something else to it. A certain nostalgia, maybe. He’s at ease in a way she has never seen of him, content as he sits on the old rug digging through one of the boxes Alice dragged from New York. There are enough left back in storage it would take them the better part of a year to go through properly if she keeps making these trips back to Washington and neither of them seem in a hurry to speed the process along. The boundaries of their relationship are hazy and difficult to navigate now, but neither wants to be the one to draw a line in the sand between old lover and friend - so they make up the rules as they go.
Perhaps strangest of all is the fact Alan is alone, Scratch seemingly nowhere in sight, and being in the cabin with him is almost familiar if not for how they’ve changed.
The ways in which Alan was rough at the edges have been worn smoother, not absent so much as…controlled. Handled with greater care. It would be both unfair and untrue to say he simply handed Scratch all of the worst parts of himself, but he is most certainly more tranquil - less a bucking choppy sea throwing boats to-and-fro. Alan should be in the tail end of his forties, but time hasn’t touched him the way it should. When he disappeared he’d been a baby-faced young man of thirty three who tried to make himself look older with his short swept hair and tightly trimmed scruff, but the long hair that begins to curl above his shoulders makes him look somehow younger than he’d been even then. Softens his eyes, somehow, and the full beard at his jaw only serves to make him look even gentler.
The man who went below isn’t quite the same as the man who has come up from the depths.
Alice expected to find him just as nervous and twitchy as he’d been when she left for New York, but he’s remarkably confident here as he pulls his mother’s photo album from the moving box.
“Never thought I’d see this again.” He smiles and when Alan turns to her, looking so earnestly grateful, it makes her want to cry. “Thanks, Alice. You didn’t have to do all this.”
But I did. Because despite the secret, the arguments and making up and then arguing about something else, Alan still went into the lake after her. He traded himself for her, not knowing what fate awaited him below - only that he could not leave Alice behind. The simple fact is Alice loves this man fiercely, she loved him as her husband and loves him now as her friend and feels no great guilt for this. They spent over a decade trying to reach one another, after all.
“Alice?” His voice is concerned now and she realizes she’s been just standing there staring at him for God knows how long. Caught up in her own head, as she is wont to do.
“Where’s Scratch?” She asks instead of what she really means and busies herself with grabbing a can of soda from the fridge.
There’s not much in the old refrigerator and none of it is the expensive stuff from that bougie ‘farmers market’ back home, but Alice imagines farmers markets in Bright Falls are truer to the name. There’s a case of Coke sitting beside a couple beer bottles that boast being made with local cherries, a package of venison from the butcher that looks a lot more appealing than the Styrofoam takeout carton of indeterminate age, a handful of apples…and nothing else. She checks the freezer and finds no less than twelve microwave TV dinners. Alice resolves herself to dragging him into town for proper groceries and an excuse to see that farmers market.
Alan laughs, glancing back at her, and he looks terrifically handsome in this homey knitted cardigan undoubtedly gifted from a local. He leans far into the box, vanishing from the waist up as he reaches into the bottom and pulls out a bag with his winter clothes inside. Those nice wool sweaters with the geometric patterns across the top, fair-isle or something, a smart pea-coat and leather jacket, the blue and white scarf she got him for Christmas one year. “Scratch? He’s out sulking.”
“Sulking?” She leans over the back of the sofa, plucking the scarf up from the pile. Alice has no idea why he kept it at all, it’s nothing like the style he once wore - more akin to the folksy kind of look the people of Watery and Bright Falls seem to favor. He always wore it anyway, even when it broke the cool guy aesthetic he aimed for.
“Hm?” He sends her a peculiar look, like can’t decide if she’s teasing him or not, then returns to sorting through the contents freed from several boxes. “He’s jealous of you.”
Alice chokes on her drink, nearly spilling the whole can down her front and Alan’s got that bemused kind of smile that suggests this should’ve been plainly obvious already.
“What? Why?” If anyone should be jealous it’s her, but that’s not what she feels in regards to Scratch and Alan. It’s more akin to how she imagines a parent seeing their child off at the wedding altar would feel, though her own parents had been far more disappointed when Alice married. They never liked Alan, never accepted him, and he returned the favor.
Alan cringes, ruffling his fingers through his hair as he considers. He’s much more thoughtful with what he says these days, now that he knows how much power is in a word.
“He…it isn’t a matter of us being together now or not, but that I had someone else at all. Hell, if I wasn’t married to you he’d have been jealous over some girl I kissed in 4th grade instead.” His little huff of a laugh is fond and when he looks up at her Alice can see the affection in him when he speaks of this creature. “He lived in my head, so he can know everything I do and see everything I did, with you or anyone else. To Scratch, sex is…It’s not about getting off for fun, I don’t think he even has desire like that in a human way, it’s about being part of me like he was in the Dark Place - but obeying the rules of our world to do so.”
The next thing he pulls from the box is a little stuffed moose, threadbare and smelling faintly of mothballs. One of, if not the only, remnants of his childhood. Besides the Clicker, of course. “He’s jealous because he perceives you as having claimed a piece of me and he doesn’t like sharing.”
Alice sets the now empty can on the counter, coming to sit on the rug beside him close enough their shoulders brush. There are a great many questions she’s had for him and now that she’s got the chance Alice says the first thing on her mind with the thoughtless curiosity that got her as far as she had these last thirteen years. “You… have sex with it?”
All at once Alan tenses and she feels the walls build up around him, towering and impenetrable as he withdraws into himself so fast she feels the whiplash make her head spin. In the years she’s been on her own Alice has had to grow more determined, callous in ways she never was before, all in order to get answers - anything at all from people like the FBC. She’s looked at the world through analytical eyes for so long, too long, and she finds its made her a little less considerate and regrets it now that Alan looks so goddamn betrayed. The more the seconds tick by the further from her he gets.
“Shit, I didn’t mean it like that.” Alice takes his hand, relieved when he doesn’t immediately push her away. “I’m not mad or something, I don’t know why I fucking asked - its not my business.”
“It is though.” He says, tentatively holding her hand in return but cannot look her in the eye. “I know what you’re really thinking.”
Alice drops her head back against the foot of the sofa, staring up at the ceiling as the call of birds rings out over the lake. It’s a thing she’s avoided thinking about for years, back when she first began to grow suspicious about her husband. All her friends talked about their boyfriends being so goddamn pushy, wryly complaining that they only had sex on their minds and how Alice was so lucky to find a guy that didn’t think with his dick. Whenever they had sex it wasn’t…she didn’t think she was twisting his arm, or pressuring him into it. Alan was thoughtful with her, really seemed to care. Yet he never made the move to pursue her first, always waiting for her to come to him. What’s it mean now that she knows what she had perceived all those years ago was true?
“Did I…make you do certain things with me?” She asks at length and even that isn’t entirely what she really means. How did you do this for years, did you imagine me as someone else, did you secretly hate every second of it, did you just go into your own mind the every time we were together?
“No. No, Alice, it wasn't like that.” He says seriously and lets out a tremulous breath, those stone walls coming down inch by inch until all that remains is a vulnerable man. “I love you and wanted you to be happy, it was important and it mattered because I hoped it would make you happy. I wasn’t just…pretending you were a man the whole time.”
They agreed to burn the list of fair and not fair, but it’s still hard not to sort through the ashes together. Not to let her mind spiral into places it doesn’t belong. She meant it when she said she didn’t regret Alan, that she cares about him as someone very dear to her - but some days she can’t help but wonder what would’ve happened had they talked about this before leaving for Bright Falls. Or…If Scratch was never there in the Dark Place, coveting and adoring him, would Alan have stayed with her even now? Kept it up just to please her, to keep her from heartbreak?
She asks him just as much, terrified of the answer when Alan levels her with a rueful smile.
“I…don’t know.” He says honestly. “I can't say what a different me would do, Alice.”
Alan didn’t leave her because of Scratch, but this creature undeniably makes him braver, encourages the truth to come out one way or another - even if it is driven by selfishness where Alan is concerned. Would he have stayed? Maybe, if they were both willing to pretend. But Alan thinks the time for what-if’s is over, dead and gone and he buries the maybe’s in the deepest grave he can manage. Drops them down into the deepest ocean where they belong.
“I can only tell you what the me I am now thinks.” He brings her hand up, where they’re still clinging to each other like frightened children, and presses his mouth to the back of her knuckles. It works in lightening the gloom over her, makes her laugh and shove into his shoulder with her own. “I think you wasted enough time trying to save me, and it isn’t that I’m not grateful but I want to see you thrive. You’ve outgrown me anyway, who cares about some corny book when you’ve got your own gallery.”
He stands and tugs her up with him, here in the cabin on Diver’s Isle that changed their lives forever and somehow those changes don’t feel as horrible as they once did.
“You should come see it.” She says, full of this girlish enthusiasm Alan remembers from when they first met. “And maybe if you drop in at the FBC in person, Estevez will stop harassing me every other day to try and convince you to call Faden back.”
They part, hands falling away, but neither feels bereft for it. Alan begins patting down his pockets and retrieves a little black hair tie that he uses to messily pull his shaggy hair away from his face, then groans and rolls his eyes. “Oh hell, they’re never gonna leave us alone are they?”
“Nope, and I’m not going to leave you alone until you get actual groceries.”
Alan begrudgingly shoves his boots on at the door, staring up at her with the most pathetic puppy dog sort of look she’s ever seen on a grown man. “Alright. Be cruel.” His pout turns into something a little too knowing, eyes sharp, and Alice is reminded of how unlike anyone in the world he is. How to someone else he might even be frightening. “But I wanna hear about that hot date you had this afternoon with Casey.”
She’s half way down the porch when he says it and she spins around to gawk at him - her foot nearly going through the rickety wood steps. “That wasn’t a date, he’s just being polite. How did you even know in the first place?!”
Alan shrugs, bundled in his old leather coat and looking strangely unlike anything he ever has before. New hair. Old coat. Different and same. Human, but not. “I told you, Scratch was out sulking.”
The bridge to the shore is much less rickety than she recalls and just wide enough for them to walk alongside each other as they talk. Though the lake water splashing across her shoes makes Alice wish he’d picked a significantly less precarious place to live.
“Is it here?” She asks, glancing around the sandy bank of Cauldron Lake where fishermen stand casting out their lines and kids sit around the shell of a bonfire.
“Scratch? He’s always here, but physically? No.” Alan tilts his head, eyes gazing distantly over her shoulder as if listening for something only he perceives. His eyes snap to her once more and that uncanniness hangs heavy around him as he grins just a little too keenly. “It doesn’t matter how far apart we are, I can still feel him.”
Perhaps that ought to frighten her, the inhumanity of Alan Wake - but all she feels is curiosity and wonder. Awed by the ways in which this man has become something she believes he was always meant to be. Maybe it’s true that a poet wrote him into being, maybe Alan was simply born for this destiny, but it’s a beautiful thing to bear witness to. If she's lucky, maybe Alan will let her take a few photos…
Every other weekend the whole of Bright Falls’ main street is filled with market stalls, vivid red tents lining up and down the street like poppies in the spring. Alan has avoided it ever since they came out of the lake, as he does most of the town. The single grocery store doesn’t stay open 24/7 like the bodegas in New York, so he’s been making trips as late as he can cut it to avoid the bulk of the residents - too nervous to bear the thought of running into someone angry. Some people, like Rose and the Anderson’s, are largely fond of him - while the rest don’t seem to mind him taking up residence on the island. Others he isn’t so sure of and fears finding out.
He wouldn’t hold it against them either way.
In the privacy of the cabin he feels remarkably comfortable, at peace in ways he’s never been, but here in the daylight Alan feels a certain amount of anxiety - a lingering discomfort borne from thirteen years worth of madness and isolation. It’s always been there, but in the Before he could mask it all with a self-imposed swagger he didn’t really mean. It’s hard not to wince at the man he’d been when he thinks of it now, but maybe that’s just life in general: being embarrassed of yourself every 5-10 years.
At a distance he hears the click whir of a shutter going off and sends Alice a flat stare as she smirks over the bulky camera in her hands. She’s planning on doing a whole new gallery based on Bright Falls and seems to be thoroughly enjoying herself thus far. Mostly she’s wandered off on her own, occasionally texting him on that shiny new phone he was harassed into getting. Check this out, or do you need a knitted tea cozy?
“Eager beaver.” Scratch says in his mind, sing-song and lilting. Though where the creature is physically he does not know - only senses the presence in his mind. It is no surprise Scratch would rather make itself scarce.
Adjusting the canvas shopping bag around his arm Alan weaves through the crowd, steadfastly ignoring the occasional lingering glances in his direction. That isn’t new to him, people stared in New York too, but those were overzealous fans and these are people who have reason to distrust him. He did his best, though. Bargained for the return of those who had been taken and can only hope that’s earned him enough good will. However, there is one person in particular that he is rather pleased to see again.
“Hello, Miss. Weaver.”
At seventy-seven years old, Cynthia Weaver looks much different than he remembers: her hair now gone pale silver and cut short around her ears, a certain willowyness to her that doesn’t match the fuller figured woman of thirteen years ago. Her eyes are the same, bright and crystal clear as she perks at his voice. The booth she sits behind is manned by one of the aides from the nursing home he’s learned she now resides in, and neat bushels of chicken eggs are lined along the table - brown and speckled and white. He should really get a dozen, they’re easy to make when he doesn’t want to devote time to cooking a proper meal. Maybe he’ll get two dozen…
She lights at the sight of him, scanning Alan’s face with something like wistful heartache in her pale eyes. Some days he thinks to dye his hair, something garishly blond or even ginger - just to make himself feel less like a facsimile of Thomas Zane, but he never does in the end. This life is his own and he refuses to waste his time running from shadows.
“Now there’s a face I haven’t seen in a long time.” She says, smoothing out the front of her linen dress.
“And yet I’ve seen yours in my dreams.” Alan doesn’t know where the friendly flirtation comes from, but Cynthia lets out a shocked roar of laughter and he decides embarrassing himself was worth it. He’s not certain he’ll ever understand Zane for what he did to this woman. It feels too unfair.
She loved him, he thinks.
“She was relieved when Barbara died.” Scratch counters.
Both are true.
“You’re a rascal, Mr. Wake.” She shoots back, but it’s all lighthearted and without any real heat. Cynthia likes him well enough, even if she also thinks he’s a fool of a man.
“I try not to be.” He concedes.
There’s little cardboard cartons he uses to nestle the eggs in, not certain what the difference between them really is outside of the color and he’s too embarrassed to ask and sound like the city boy he is. From his periphery he catches an occasional flash of Alice’s camera as she meanders through the streets, her cheerful voice, and he’s glad for her company - even if things are different now. He doesn’t think he’d have been brave enough to come out today without her.
Cynthia seems to be watching her too, something sharply clever in her eyes as she piece’s things together. “Your wife has been out of town for a while, Mr. Wake.”
“That’s because she isn’t my wife.” He tries to impart a sense of levity, a sign of that being okay. Good, even. “Alice is a good friend.”
“She is.” Cynthia agrees, turning to him as Alan fiddles with a particularly large egg as if it’s the most interesting thing in the world. “You and the monster are together on the island, I hear. Keeping your eyes on the lake.”
There’s no accusation in her voice, only open curiosity. The pointed bluntness unique to elderly women and he figures if anyone has earned it Cynthia Weaver is certainly one of them. Still, he swallows the lump in this throat and tries to remind himself there’s no hiding now. He is not ashamed, to be so would discredit not only himself but Scratch. Inhuman entity that it is, it seeks his approval in nearly everything in a way that can be shockingly childish - like a little kid hoping their crayon drawing gets stuck on the fridge.
“That we are.” He busies himself counting out singles. A lot has changed in the world, things he isn’t quite ready for, like phones so sleek and thin they’re practically paper and being able to tap a credit card on one to make payments - he prefers the feeling of dollar bills in his hand and is privately grateful that Bright Falls is as stuck in the past as he is. “Though there’s not much to see these days.”
“No one’s come out?” Her voice is halfway between hopeful and bitter, a conflicted look on her face, and Alan knows who she means.
He’s tucking the bills into a wooden donation box with the Valhalla Nursing Home logo on the front when he feels a familiar chill inching up his spine, the hair at the back of his neck going on end and even Cynthia pulls her cardigan a little tighter around herself. She seems entirely unsurprised when Scratch appears at his side, peering over Alan’s shoulder to inspect the cartons of eggs in feigned disinterest. Strangely, the trimmed beard on its face has not grown in the few weeks since Alan first shaved the scruff down and he suspects Scratch keeps it short to differentiate them that little bit more.
For whose benefit he isn’t certain.
With the late afternoon sun just barely beginning to tint with pink, inching slowly towards the horizon line, the sky has darkened just enough for Scratch to be visible as an after image within him. There but not, a stuttering frame that wavers in and out of existence with the passing of sunlight. Alan doesn’t need to see it to know where Scratch is, for he feels this creature like he does his own limbs. The further away the more phantom the sensation, but it is always there in some vague way. The longer they coexist the stronger that connection grows, one day Alan thinks he would be able to feel Scratch clear across the world.
“Gratefully, I do not control the whims of Thomas Zane.” Scratch says, picking up an egg from the cardboard sleeve and holding it up to the light. Alan realizes it’s trying to gather how such a thing is eaten, presumably never having needed to pay any attention to human stuff like that before. Here, in this reality, it seems perpetually curious about the most mundane of things.
“Pretty sure Tom doesn’t control his own whims either.” Alan mutters and snatches the egg back - delicately placing it back in the carton sleeve before shooting her an apologetic look. “That’s my cue to go, have a good day Miss. Weaver.”
“You.” She calls out to Scratch, chin held high and haughty. “If you find him, tell him I’m kicking his ass back in the lake.”
Alan loops his arm through the other’s to drag Scratch along through the crowd of people, both to hide its raucous barking laughter and to avoid any further conversation about poets or filmmakers.
“I like her.”
“You drowned her in the bathtub.” He points out, eying up a booth with loaves of bread so fresh they’re still steaming. A feat of its own for the Washington chill.
Scratch shrugs, unbothered and unapologetic. “I drown a lot of people. It isn’t personal.”
In addition to what may be too many eggs, Alan ends up with a loaf of rye bread and two jars of orange marmalade from one booth, a bag of large flat homemade noodles from another, and several little meat pasties that Tor and Odin practically shoved into his hands for free if not for him sneaking several bills to the beleaguered table attendant. Wordlessly Scratch takes the increasingly cumbersome bag from his hands, a quietly pensive look on its face. As the sky dims, Scratch takes shape into something more solid, until it is simply a man walking beside him.
Perhaps he shouldn’t be so surprised the people of Bright Falls seem largely unafraid of Scratch’s presence with him, more curious and bemused than anything truly fearful and he wonders if perhaps they see Scratch less as the Dark Presence and more as an oddity of Alan himself. Like he’s tamed a wild animal and is taking it out on a walk. Those who have been more directly affected know better, but make no fuss. At least not to his face.
In the end, Scratch has been a part of Bright Falls for so long it's practically ingrained into the very soil.
“Eat.” Scratch says, stalling him beneath the awning of the Oh Deer Diner and digging a still hot pasty from the box. “Today? No breakfast. Last night, no dinner.” He eyes Alan with a critical squint. “Yesterday afternoon, lunch…?”
Alan guiltily looks anywhere else but at his face, the glow of red halogen light from the diner’s sign at his back - the chatter of voices inside dimming in his mind as Scratch holds the little meat-filled pastry out for him. There’s a stern sort of look in the set of Scratch’s jaw, like some disappointed parent dealing with a naughty child refusing to eat his broccoli.
“I can eat when we get home.” He waves Scratch’s hand away, stubborn and flustered.
“You hurt yourself for no reason.” Scratch takes a disgruntled bite for himself, as if to prove the value in eating it, and Alan wonders if this creature can even eat for real in the first place.
When they kiss it’s mouth feels real enough, there’s human heat and wetness on its tongue. When they fuck it cums like a real human man would. But he’s never seen Scratch eat. He thinks that perhaps it must obey, in some capacity, the rules of whatever shape it inhabits. Or perhaps it is simply entertaining him by doing so. Clearly Scratch has been following his thoughts, for a look equal parts amusement and annoyance flickers across his face. He reaches out and pulls Alan in with a hand at his jaw, offering the pastry once more.
“Eat, before you think yourself into madness.”
He obediently takes a bite directly from the other’s hand, mechanically chewing one mouthful after the next - pinned like an insect by the intensity of Scratch crowding him in. It feels exceptionally intimate to be hand fed like this, a little too intense for the public eye, and only once he has finished is Alan released. He wipes the crumbs off his mouth on the back of his sleeve as Scratch smiles proud and indulgent.
“There.” He huffs, trying to grapple at a sense of stability.
Scratch leans close, until they are cheek-to-cheek, and speaks in his ear. “I am not a tool to hurt yourself on, Alan Wake.”
A cold stone sinks in Alan’s gut, guilt and despair and frustration. Has that been what he’s doing? He’s used to going days not taking care of himself, of isolation and loneliness and…that’s exactly what he did with Alice. Scratch only hums, turning just enough to press a kiss at the corner of his mouth as if rewarding Alan for being a clever boy. When Alan gives in, allows himself to sink into synchronicity with this entity, he knows wholeness - transcends himself. It is only his inclination to snap and bite which keeps him in a loop of self-destruction.
“I’m sorry.” He says, watching the sunset over Scratch’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I know.” It pulls away from the crook of his shoulder, taking his face between smooth palms and kisses him like real people do. Perhaps for a second too long, a little too deeply, then steps back to give him space enough to push away from the side of the building.
Alan feels like he must be stumbling, like his feet don’t want to work the right way, and must force his mind to clear before together they slip back between the market tents. This isn’t nearly enough groceries to properly live off, and eventually he’ll have to submit to the terrifying ordeal of entering the actual grocery store. But for now they walk, steps falling into a synchronized rhythm, and Alan thinks maybe he can make something good out of this second life he’s been given.
“I finished developing some of those photos, not all of them - but enough to get an idea on the design of the gallery.” Alice’s voice comes over the speaker on his phone as Alan scrolls through the email she sent him.
They’re good, of course they are. Alice has always done great work and he’s glad to see it going somewhere besides his own book covers. She’s invited him to her showing back in New York, but Scratch is skeptical - despite all that it’s marginally warmed up to her after her last visit. Seemingly feeling less threatened by Alice’s mere existence once it spotted her having a perfectly normal and platonic lunch with Casey. What it knows of human relationships is often tied to the works it’s consumed: film and painting and writing. Romantic prose and flowery tales of lovers divided by the odds. He can’t blame Scratch for this, but it's not necessarily the most realistic of examples.
“They look great.” He says honestly, pausing at a particularly lovely shot of the pier on Main Street: a fisherman caught mid-cast with the bright morning sun reflecting off the lake in a swirl of colors. Some are of that farmers market, others of the forest. People and places alike. There’s even one of that weird teacup ride at the amusement park, Coffee World or something. He sort of wants to go, even if just to pet the goats, but hesitates at going anywhere too near the Koskela brothers.
“There’s some I wanted to ask you about…” She says tentatively. “I got a few of you. They’re some of my favorites actually.”
He pauses on a photograph of Cynthia Weaver. Alan’s in it as well, smiling small and embarrassed - just a little quirk of the mouth, but exists out of focus compared to Cynthia. The woman has been caught mid laugh, her face weathered and heavy with wrinkles and beautiful. It’s one of Alice’s best, he thinks, she’s always shone brightest when it came to capturing people like this. The realness of them.
“Bet your folks will love to see me again.” He teases, hunched over on the sofa with the laptop on the coffee table. He sips from a thermos with the diner logo emblazoned across the sides, just plain water after Scratch harshly limited his coffee consumption. According to Scratch, the caffeine makes it feel ‘like our brain is vibrating’ and the logistics of how what he consumes effects Scratch is something he isn’t up for investigating.
She laughs, but it comes out a touch forced. Nervous. “What I wanted to ask you is uh, well, Scratch is in them too…”
“Wait, really?” He pauses, a sudden sharp ache in his chest as he comes to the first photograph of himself and the other. It’s at the first hint of dusk, Scratch only a hazy figure both inside and separate from himself, as if someone tuned an old television set in between channels. With his dark hair and bulky messenger bag they stand out starkly among the vibrant red tents, a little splotch of contrast right in the middle of the street.
“I see the first one, it looks great by the way, but I don’t think he cares about being seen if that's what you’re worried about. Or is it the FBC making a fuss?” He takes another swig from the thermos, ice cubes loudly clanking around inside. Alice had put together an entire gallery featuring clearly supernatural photographs and the FBC never stopped her, they seem more keen on observing anything related to Alan Wake than directly interfering - as long as no ones getting hurt.
“Not that. It's…okay, you know how you told me I could get kind of invasive with some of my work?” When behind the lens Alice often finds herself caught in the moment of what she is trying to capture, separate from the world around her to a degree that occasionally lends itself to being…meddlesome to those that find themselves the subject of her photography.
“….Yeah?” Alan hesitates and comes to a very specific series of photos, struck by the sudden understanding. “Oh.”
They’re outside the little diner, him and Scratch, light from within casting them both in harsh shadow and limning their faces in the neon red signage - alighting the rise of his cheeks, the bridge of his nose, catching in his dark hair. It begins with Scratch leaning over him, their eyes focused only on one another with a shocking intensity - two people caught in their own little bubble of quiet intimacy. The next shows Scratch with a hand on his jaw, something agonizingly soft in the creature's face as it remains frozen in this moment of affection. Alan is looking up into his own face, his own pale eyes, and being seen in return. The last is them kissing, Alan with his head tilted to fit the imposing presence that cradles his face far gentler than such a feral thing has any right to be.
The images are ones of profound tenderness, lovers and something more, wrapped up in themselves and deaf to the world. Certainly deaf to the sounds of her camera, at any rate.
“Alan?”
In the photographs Alan looks wondrously, hopelessly, in love. Adoring and adored by something that shouldn’t have the capacity for it at all. He has never seen himself this way and it leaves him breathless, heart thunderous beneath his ribs.
“I can get rid of them.” Alice says quickly, her voice heavy with guilt - static over the phone. “I wasn’t thinking, I just saw you and…”
“No. They’re fantastic.” It’s true, they’re amazing down to the last little tweak of shadow and saturated beam of light. “You’re really great, I was just. Surprised?” Alan runs his fingers through his hair as he laughs awkwardly, leaning back on the sofa.
“So you’re not super pissed?”
“I’m not even a little pissed, but your folks are gonna have a fucking field day.”
He remembers the early days when first meeting Alice’s parents, her father gruffly calling him a pansy little shit over dinner at some Italian restaurant that probably doesn’t even exist anymore. Alan always suspected they knew, but never came right out and said anything about it to him or Alice. Just sent him dirty looks during the holidays and argued with Alice that he wasn’t good enough for her. What they meant was: can’t you see it? He can't even be angry about that when they were right, but he can be angry with how they acted so fucking high and mighty all the damn time.
“Yeah well, they can deal. It’s not their business.” Even now Alice defends him, just as she used to when her and her mom would get into those awful shouting matches. It wasn’t even about him specifically, but their dislike of Alan always brought out the worst in everybody. “The tabloids will eat it up though.”
That’s probably true, but he’s simply over it all. Spent thirteen years with far bigger fish to fry than some gossip rag accusing him of being a lizard person infiltrating the planet or whatever the fuck that one blog was on about. One theory as to his disappearance, according to what he’d seen floating around some decidedly weird message boards, suggested he’d been recruited by the US government to hunt down bigfoot. The irony isn’t lost on him that those same people wouldn’t believe his stories of the Dark Place anyway.
“I can see the next headline now: 101 Ways to Tell if Your Husband is Gay.” He blurts out and Alice snorts with muffled laughter. It's the first time he’s said it out loud, used that dirty word he hid from for so long it felt like cinder on his tongue any time he tried.
“Number 45: he falls in love with an eldritch horror from beyond all human comprehension.” Alice says in the put on voice of a very serious news anchor.
Scratch isn’t an actual man, isn’t even a human at all, and why Alan can be so goddamn in love with it - romantically and sexually and everything in between, when he couldn’t with Alice is something he’s turned over in his mind so often it's been worn smooth as a stone. A coin with no face. What he’s come to accept is the fact Scratch is simply another part of his soul, so devoid of organic human characteristics it defies expectations. It’s simply different.
“Ohhh that’s us.” Scratch leans across the back of the sofa, looking rather interested in the photographs pulled up on Alan’s laptop. He glances at the phone in Alan’s hand and seems perplexed to see Alice there on the facetime screen. “Alice! This image, how do we get it?”
“You have to come to the gallery.” She hedges, using the leverage to entice Scratch into agreeing the trip is worth it.
It squints at the phone screen, suspicious, but relents much quicker than Alan expected. Going back to New York, the real New York, will be undoubtedly strange - as is anything one has to say goodbye to in some way. It will be…interesting to see what the tabloids think of him now. Whatever the FBC has done to cover up the truth has been enough for most people to see him as some tragic victim, a man lost and alone and terribly traumatized. They’re right about that last part. Maybe a bit of the first. But Alan is not alone and he doesn’t feel nearly as lost these days.
The afternoon is rainy and overcast, typical Washington weather as far as Alan’s come to learn, and he hunches down in his yellow parka - tugging the hood up. The thick leaf-cover overhead keeps the forest around Bright Fall’s from turning swampy, for now, but his boots kick up in stagnant puddles and send dead pine needles scattering about. Not a lot of people venture out in the chilly rain, but something about the rich scent of damp earth brings out something nostalgic in Alan - a memory half lost to childhood, and the drop of rain atop Cauldron Lake is strangely mesmerizing.
“I don’t want to go.” Scratch huffs, trailing along as Alan makes his way through the woods - twigs crunching beneath his boots. It’s dressed in a mimicry of the hoodie and jacket Alan once wore over a decade ago, like perhaps the only things it can think to conjure up are pieces of himself, and looks especially disgruntled from beneath the shade of the hood. If rain actually bothers Scratch, or the creature is merely copying what Alan is doing, he isn’t certain.
Alan hasn’t had much time to really appreciate the area, all things considered. Bright Falls really is beautiful and he’s trying to make kinder memories here, rewriting the fearful time he spent running through the dark forest with these moments of peace - dappled sunshine and bird call. A rainy gray afternoon filled with a strange yearning he cannot place.
“Neither do I.” He admits, continuing up the path. “But Alice is right; we should check out the FBC, even just to get them off our ass. Besides, we both want to see her gallery.”
He doesn’t miss the scowl on Scratch’s face, displeased both by the inevitable trip and by Alan looking forward to seeing Alice. Jealous beast. He makes it only a few more steps before he’s abruptly shoved up against a tree with Scratch at his front, nuzzling his face into the crook of Alan’s neck. There is very little that deters this needy thing, including where they are at the time or who else might be witness to the creature’s childish possessiveness.
“Hmm. Stay?”
“You can’t seduce me out of our responsibilities.” Alan teases, ducking under Scratch’s arm just to be pulled back in.
Scratch is grinning wide and wild, pressing his mouth to the rapid pulse at Alan’s wrist. “But I can seduce you.”
“In the woods?” He protests halfheartedly, the dig of damp bark scratching at the back of his raincoat - an excited heat pooling in his belly. This is absolutely not the place for this, any wayward hiker could wander along and find Alan Wake in a very compromising position with himself and he’s got no doubt the area surrounding Bright Falls is covered in cameras.
Now wouldn’t that be a show for the FBC.
“Oh yes, very compromising.” Scratch agrees, hands slipping beneath Alan’s shirt to press cold against the man’s skin. Fingers dig into soft tissue, skirting the jut of rib bones and back down to the curve of his hips - repeating the glide back up then down as if Scratch is petting him. “Stop?”
If he says stop, Scratch really will. The other might tease or pout, but above all else desires Alan’s willing acceptance of it. A concession of sorts, or more of a surrender. Perhaps it should not be so appealing to succumb to this creature, but Alan finds himself always just a little too eager - knowing that allowing any intimacy will be met by exceptional indulgence. Alan does not indulge himself in much of anything, no matter what the unkind words of reporters imply; he does not indulge in the obscenely expensive clothing common of New York elite, trendy food from restaurants with year long waitlists, or trinkets or jewelry or the newest shiny bit of technology to hit the market. The only thing he has ever gave in on was the frankly criminally overpriced apartment in Parliament Tower, and only because that was not an indulgence solely for himself.
Scratch, however, indulges at every opportunity Alan gives it and would gorge itself on the offerings if allowed. Yet the only oblation it requires is Alan himself, it is not so hard to give himself up in sacrifice.
“No. Keep going.”
At his approval, Scratch seems to grow - some unseen force that ekes out of it like the spreading of wings. A well of ink tipped over and seeping into the woodgrain. He cannot see the change, only feel a vastness surrounding them as he is crowded into the divot of a great old pine. It is a wild beast, this lovely thing of his, can hardly manage to keep all of its endless self wrapped up in the effigy of Alan Wake. Scratch looms, pale face close enough to his own that Alan can see the faintest speckle of darkness in it’s fair eyes - navy blue and cold as the bottom of the ocean. An imperfect mimicry, like flecks of steel in veins of gold. When it kisses him the taste of frost is pressed into his mouth, the air before snowfall, and his calloused hands grasp at the open front of Scratch’s coat. Some hideous tweed blazer right out of a 2010’s Macy’s catalog, exactly the sort of thing Alan would’ve put together thinking he looked real cool, but if Scratch actually picks out what he wears with any meaningful thought…that’s up for debate.
Scratch laughs against the kiss, a Cheshire cat grin right before he opens his mouth and bites at the soft skin of Alan’s lip just shy of drawing blood. “Its your clothes, that makes it your fault.”
His breath puffs out of him in a little cloud, the air surrounding Scratch just that slight bit colder than it ought to be - even for the chill of a Washington autumn, and Alan snatches a fistful of it’s hair to drag the creature in and kiss with the desperation of a drowning man. Often, Scratch is the one encouraging and leading and being particularly lewd, and so seems quite pleased by the sudden harsh bite Alan gives him in return and this time blood is spilled. Just a little, barely anything at all as the sharp point of a canine nicks the corner of Scratch’s lip and a bead of red-black blood oozes from beneath his skin. It shines in the gray light, thinner than human blood and drips like watercolor along the fullness of his mouth. When Alan kisses again he swipes his tongue out, tasting the bitter saltwater of it’s blood.
“Oooohhhh” Scratch’s voice comes out discordant and rasping, eerie in pitch - the stuttering of a record that scrapes and scratches. The little wound upon it’s mouth is gone, only pale pinkness left behind, and he lets out a low breath of pleasure. “Aren’t. You. Perfect.”
Before Alan can come up with a thought beyond absolutely blazing arousal, Scratch has both hands pawing at the buckle on his belt, harshly tugging him by the hips with each careless pull and when the ends are free it drops to it’s knees in the damp leaves. His hands flutter around it’s shoulders, fingers flexing pathetically when Scratch remains single-minded in it’s pursuit. It only undresses Alan enough to give itself room enough to take his cock into its mouth, all the way down to the base of him and Alan must bite down on his knuckles to keep from shouting. Scratch is always just a little too cold, but it’s mouth is warm and this creature has no problem using it on him - swallowing around him until his cock hits the back of it’s throat and the other doesn’t even flinch. Makes no sign of discomfort, only digs blunt fingers into Alan’s hip as it holds him there.
His hips stutter, jerking into the wet heat of its mouth. “S-sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
Alan apologizes weakly and cannot help but wonder what it says about him that he finds this creature so beautiful as it wears his face and licks the drip of precum from his cock. Some psychoanalyst out there would have a field day picking apart the self and the ego if they could see him now. He gathers the long hair around Scratch’s face, tucking it away so he can watch it lapping at the head of his cock with the most slyly pleased look in it’s eyes as it peers up at him on its knees. Supplication.
It curls both hands around the back of Alan’s thighs, gripping hard into his skin and pulling him forward roughly into it’s mouth once more and this time Alan does cry out. Still, this creature does not recoil from him, just smoothly takes the whole of him down it’s throat. This is not new to Alan, a man married for the better part of his adult life, but the connection with this monstrous thing is simply different and he feels no small guilt for that fact. Scratch lingers in his mind, a writhing presence that he feels from the inside-out and pushes against the boundaries of both their consciousness. He feels an unhappy wave from it, displeased that Alan has the audacity to think of anyone else - even if it is to feel ashamed of himself. As if to prove its irritation, Scratch draws back until only the head of his cock lingers on it’s tongue - giving the man no more until Alan begins to beg.
“It’s not like that.” He pleads, nails digging into his own palm - one hand still tangled in Scratch’s hair. “You know that’s not what I’m doing.”
Scratch draws back, one hand wrapped around the base of him as it mouths along the length of his cock with an unhurried laziness. “You think of being a bad husband to someone else.” It huffs. “You are mine, that is what you are. My writer, my artist, my Alan, my e v e r y t h i n g.”
Mine lingers between them, oppressive and profound in equal measure and Alan goes willingly when Scratch stands and hauls him up against the tree - legs going around it’s hips as it presses him into the bark with a little more roughness than it means. Mine, Alan thinks and knows Scratch hears him for it begins to mouth at the skin of his throat as if to sink wild teeth into him. When Alan is the one fumbling at the belt around it’s waist Scratch makes a guttural noise of gratification, helping him along only enough to get the jeans pulled low down it’s thighs before it grinds against him in harsh rhythm - unyielding as it holds Alan up. He drops his forehead against it’s shoulder, biting his lip to keep himself from moaning when Scratch shoves inside of him, sinking so deep he can hardly breathe. Someone is going to come along and see and there’s absolutely no way Alan will live this down, no way to explain himself if his whining grows too much and draws the attention of a local or hiker or god forbid that FBC tech he knows was out here doing repairs.
“They’re probably watching us.” Scratch coos, pressing the flat of his tongue to the thunderous pulse at Alan’s throat. “I bet there’s some naughty boy behind the cameras getting off on Alan Wake fucking a monster.”
He claws at the back of Scratch’s coat, choking off a keening little noise that he feels a hot flash of embarrassment for. It’s just meaningless dirty talk, probably, but the thought of some stranger watching - witnessing the way Scratch moves in him so easily, makes electricity tingle up his spine.
“Good boy, Alan. Let them see us.” It kisses him with teeth and tongue and swallows the sounds Alan cannot contain, fucks him into the bark like it’s laying claim. Ferocious as it devours, sweet when Alan is happy to feast on it in turn. What it really means is think of no one else.
His legs tremble, the rush of his breath tickling the hair that curls around Scratch’s ear as he clings and claws to it. Fevered heat in his belly, lower still and he knows he wont last like this with it rocking in him - sweet words in his mind, spoken against his skin. Gasping when he feels its cock nudging at that nervy spot inside of his own body.
“I love you.” Alan says and feels some sharp thread snap into place between them, the chime of a bell or strum of a tuning fork and Scratch turns abruptly gentle. Hips slowing, languid little thrusts that no longer rock Alan into the tree. “You’re mine.”
No matter how many times he tries, Alan cannot force it’s name from his throat - it remains there on his tongue thick as molasses dripping down into his belly. Scratch and something else, something ancient it has called itself since before I ever existed. But he tries and that’s what makes Scratch nuzzle against his cheek, all honeyed sweetness as it strokes along his thigh in contrition. It’s sorry for getting upset, sorry for being jealous and possessive and all the things it cannot help being - for that is the nature of the beast. But Alan loves it because, not in spite, of those things. When he cums into it’s hand stroking up the length of him, Scratch brings the wetness up to it’s own mouth and licks it off it’s fingers with a toothy licentious grin it knows makes Alan squirm.
“Yours.” Scratch plants one hand on the bark beside his head and when it kisses him again Alan tastes himself on it’s tongue.
Maybe that should be unpleasant, but it isn’t. Nothing about them ever feels wrong, disgusting, anything other than correct right good mine. Scratch is his monster, his untamed beast of a thing, himself in all things and so Alan feels no revulsion when it cums in him - crowding him in on all sides as it stills and goes hazy at the edges of it’s body, struggling to keep itself together. Scratch seems exceptionally unwilling to be a single inch apart, holding him there until Alan’s thighs begin to ache and he pleads to be set back on solid ground. This is…messy; they are damp with rain, mud and pine needles and fallen leaves sticking to his raincoat, a very distinct wetness on his skin that makes Alan feel like some fumbling teenager in the backseat of the car all over again.
When Scratch drops back to his knees Alan is not expecting it to throw one of his legs over it’s shoulder and lick at it’s own cum on his skin.
“Christ.” He blurts out weakly, stumbling when Scratch releases him to very tidily redress them both as if it hasn’t just spent the last half hour making an exhibition of them both.
Then it steps closer once more, palm smoothing from the line of his jaw and pushing his hair back behind one ear - eyes so very soft, the way it always looks when Alan reciprocates it’s desires. It’s bottomless affection.
“Stop fretting over the man you were.” He says, thumb stroking at the high rise of Alan’s cheek. The bristly prickle of the man’s beard, streaked through with little patches of gray, tickling against it’s skin. “You cannot be anyone other than who you are now. Stay with me, Alan Wake. Do not go where I cannot follow.”
There is no room for Scratch in his past. In the years he spent working long shifts as a night guard desperately clawing his way out to get his first real job as a writer, Night Springs and detective novels and meeting a pretty girl who didn’t look at him like he was the worlds biggest fuck up. Scratch is not there in the days he spent sneaking into bars with Barry when they were just rowdy teenagers, thinking they were so goddamn untouchable. Alan cannot live there, in the hours lost to time, and remain here. With this terrible monster that loves him. Scratch takes his hand in it’s own, turning back towards the shoreline where the path to Diver’s Isle waits, and Alan goes forward - not looking back.